Introduction: The Confusion We All Live In
Just before writing this article, I spent 45 minutes scrolling through cat memes. I somehow ended up reading an article about Americana, a Brazilian state where, in the late 1800s, thousands of Confederate soldiers settled after the American Civil War. This is not my proudest moment, but it got me thinking: how do you know when you’re genuinely enjoying something versus just numbing yourself with mindless information? The modern world gives us infinite content, dopamine loops, and pseudo-enjoyment disguised as fun, so answering that question is harder than you might think. But here’s the thing, enjoyment and distraction look identical while you’re in them, but the difference shows up before and after. So in this essay, I want to help you identify the difference between the two, and maybe next time, I can think twice before wasting hours of my life on Wikipedia.
The Core Distinction: Energy vs Drain (Why Some Activities Restore You and Others Don’t)
We confuse enjoyment and distraction because they are pleasurable in the moment. Procrastination, avoidance, and low-quality pleasures masquerade as “breaks”, but unlike truly enjoyable activities, they don’t restore you in any way.
On the one hand, enjoyment gives you energy: it makes you feel replenished, more alive, and more present. Examples of activities that I find enjoyable include playing guitar, reading a long-form essay on my Kindle, or spending time with friends. Distraction, on the other hand, drains energy: it makes you feel dull, annoyed, or weirdly tired. Examples of distractions include using social media, tab-hopping on YouTube, and scrolling through memes.
Presence vs Numbing: The Attention Test
Real enjoyment includes some form of attention, even if you feel relaxed doing the activity in question. Something I’ve noticed about enjoyment is that it demands something from you, and the more you give, the more you obtain in return. For example, a while ago I decided I wanted to learn more about cinema. I read David Bordwell’s Film Art, and after I watch a movie, I usually read a long-form essay and write a short review with ideas of my own. As you can see, this takes extra time and effort, but I’ve noticed that I pay attention to elements from movies I didn’t know about before. I get some twisted satisfaction from knowing something about camera movement, the meaning behind different shots, and how a director uses color to illustrate ideas and feelings.
Distraction, on the other hand, is usually passive and designed to override your attention. That explains why you start watching funny cat videos on YouTube one second, and the next thing you know, it’s dark outside and you forgot to have dinner. And that brings us to the deeper layer behind enjoyment and distraction: values.
Values and Choice: How to Identify Meaningful Activities
Enjoyment usually aligns with something you deeply care about, and it involves creativity, connection, learning, relaxation, and expression. In my case, I love playing guitar. I can do it for hours because I get lost in the activity. In the opening paragraph of this article, I said that “enjoyment and distraction look identical while you’re in them, but the difference shows up before and after”. Before playing guitar, I had this urge to do so. After doing it, I never regretted it. Now, distraction usually contradicts your values in small and irritating ways. If I go to Instagram for a second and it’s suddenly 40 minutes later and I catch myself watching a raccoon solving a Rubik’s cube, I feel terrible. I feel terrible because my values involve learning something new, and the video I just described doesn’t fit the bill.
Which leads me to the next idea. Enjoyment is intentional. This means you set time aside to watch a movie, play the guitar, or read a book. Distraction, on the other hand, is accidental. You launch an app (which is now easier than ever), and before you know it, it’s 3 am, and you hate yourself. Likewise, even though enjoyment has a natural end, distraction is endless by design. Modern features like autoplay, infinite scroll, and notifications are the architecture of distraction, and you should avoid them at all costs.
The Guilt Filter: A Counterintuitive Way to Tell the Difference
There’s something else that’s part of the equation, but few people talk about that: guilt. We live in a world where we’re supposed to be productive all the time, as if the only purpose we have is to create content to become rich or famous. I want to suggest a counterintuitive idea, which is that we should remove guilt entirely. If you still feel that the activity was meaningful once you’re done with it, that’s enjoyment. If you think the activity was pointless and added nothing meaningful to your life, then it was a distraction.
Conclusion: Reclaiming Real Enjoyment
The goal isn’t to eliminate fun, but to reclaim it from algorithms and avoidance. Everyone needs downtime, but downtime should feed you, not flatten you. So while I could give you some practical rules you could follow, you’re the only one who can identify what’s enjoyment and what’s a distraction. So from now on, do your best to focus on activities that give you energy, that you can lose yourself in, and that align with your deepest values. The idea is to choose the things that make life feel full again because that’s something you’ll never regret.
